La Dolce Vita: Part 1

By: buddhawannabe

Not a "gay porn remake" of Fellini's film, though the owners of the US rights to the latter film did attempt to sue Michael Lucas et al. for trademark infringement. (See the Wikipedia article, which I'm betting Michael himself wrote, for details.) Instead, it's your standard decadence-among-the-jet-set film: segments portraying behind-the-scenes activity at fashion shows alternate with episodes in which various people engage in strenuous activities in various beds, sex clubs, etc., before Michael decides, at the end of Part Two, that he's really been doing too much of that kind of thing, and settles down for some serious work. Lucas claimed to have spent $250,000 on this film, and it does look quite glitzy; 2006-2008 was a period in which the gay porn industry was attempting to assert its respectability, and its way of doing that was to make movies which were 'just as good' (i.e. expensive) as mainstream movies (see "To The Last Man" of a couple of years later, adapted from a Zane Grey novel, no less, which Raging Stallion ostensibly spent $200,000 on making). Never mind that more erotically charged films have been made with a single rented Steadi-Cam in a motel room. If your idea of hotness includes beverage parties that take place in upscale NYC apartments, hot party guests in (and eventually out of) designer clothes, and lines of foreplay such as "I'm surprised you're still with him, he hasn't written a good novel since his first one," then hop to it. (In Part II, should you attempt it, Chad Hunt fucks Cole Ryan quite deliciously.)